Fragrance carrier made of sawdust

Bloom Biorenewables offers a sustainable alternative to petroleum, helping customers meet the growing demand for nature-based products and achieve their sustainability objectives. The company also develops innovative solutions for emerging markets, including new scents, nutraceuticals, and biodegradable bioplastics. Bloom’s plant-based approach reduces CO2 emissions by 30%, without compromising on performance or price, providing cost-competitive, high-quality materials. Learn more about how Bloom Biorenewables aims to decarbonize the chemical industry.

Scientists agree that the woody biomass of this planet has the potential to replace petroleum as a raw material in the production of fuels, plastics, cosmetics and textiles. However, of the main components of wood only cellulose is currently used on an industrial scale – in the production of paper and cardboard.

In order to be able to use the other two main components of wood – lignin and hemicellulose – a team of researchers at EPFL developed the aldehyde-assisted fractionation (AAF) process. A patent application was filed in 2017 and the three chemists Florent Héroguel, Jeremy Luterbacher, and Remy Buser founded Bloom Biorenewables in 2020. A year later, Breakthrough Energy Ventures-Europe (BEV-E), co-financed by Bill Gates, joined the Fribourg-based company.

“Since then,” says co-CEO Héroguel, “things have been progressing steadily.” Last September, the company entered the market with dsm-firmenich, the world's second-largest fragrance manufacturer, which is looking for alternatives to fossil derivatives in the production of perfumes and flavors. Ingredients derived from lignin are expected to reduce the ecological footprint many times over.

Bloom also entered into a partnership with the chemical company Valsynthèse. The Valais-based company will operate the first industrial AAF plant for Bloom to process sawdust and wood shavings from Swiss forests. “The current batch size is 100 kg,” explains Héroguel. But this is just the beginning: the Fribourg-based company plans to commission its production plant in 2026, with annual production expected to reach 80,000 tonnes by 2028.

There is great interest in the industry, particularly because the use of AAF to process cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin is no more complex than the refining of fossil raw materials. Meanwhile, the company is also collaborating with construction supplier Soprema and the packaging engineers at Procter & Gamble.

Bloom currently focuses on speciality chemicals for the textile, food, cosmetics and packaging industries. However, in principle AAF can also be used to produce starting products for plastics and biofuel manufacture. “For this high-volume business,” says Héroguel, “we are looking for partners worldwide that rely on our technology.”


Making biomass a true alternative to petroleum: Jeremy Luterbacher, Florent Héroguel, Remy Buser (from left to right) from Bloom Biorenewables

This article was first published in the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Magazine 2024.